December 12, 2020

Newly Pardoned Michael Flynn Was a Crowd Favorite Among the Extremists at Trump’s Latest Rally

The disgraced former national security adviser was among the headliners at the March for Trump.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

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Fresh off his presidential pardon, former national security adviser Michael Flynn joined the March for Trump rally Saturday afternoon in downtown Washington, DC. During a speech in front of an assortment of QAnon followers, Proud Boys, and other far-right extreme groups, Flynn told the crowd that he still fully believes Donald Trump will serve a second term (he won’t)—thanks to the power of prayer.

Despite the Supreme Court’s rejection of Texas’ lawsuit that tried to throw out all of the votes from four states that voted for Joe Biden, Saturday’s spectacle attracted hundreds of people who falsely believe the election was rigged against the president. The Trump campaign has had its complaints rejected by courts across the country, but that apparently has not stopped the president’s supporters from boldly claiming that the fight to subvert the will of 81 million voters is still not over.

Unfortunately, Flynn wasn’t the only high-profile Trump ally to make remarks that appear to be completely detached from reality. Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser for the campaign, said if you think “sleepy Joe Biden is going to fake his way into the White House, then you have not been paying attention.”

The founder of the Stop the Steal movement, Ali Alexander, threatened to vote out any Republicans who didn’t try to block certification of Biden’s win in the House on January 6, saying, “Stop the steal is never going to stop.”

Though the speakers seemed to be taking themselves very seriously, the rally was chock-full of conspiracy theorists who believe John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and was in the crowd and that the election was stolen by an evil supercomputer. But the credibility of the movement took perhaps its biggest hit when the leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, posted on Parler that he received a last-minute invite to the White House, as if he was going to a high-level, top-secret meeting with the president.

But, as it turns out, he was just going on a public Christmas tour. 

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